


Baby the City's Trying to Kill You but I'm Trying to Love You

by octonaut



Category: TwitchRP
Genre: Angst, Dramatic and ineloquent declarations of love, Fluff, M/M, Yearning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 11:45:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20114578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/octonaut/pseuds/octonaut
Summary: so like, a lot of people want randy dead so he should probably skip town, but there's something he has to tell robot first. just in case he, like, y'know, dies.





	Baby the City's Trying to Kill You but I'm Trying to Love You

It starts with a phone call, as most things seem to do these days. Hell, Randy’s been on the receiving end of bad news so often now that he feels a stab of anxiety every time the damn phone rings. The only reason he doesn’t turn it off or just pitch it into the lake is because if he did that, he’d be robbing himself of the one thing that can afford him any sort of respite from the bullshit life’s been throwing at him lately, the one  _ person _ , the blissful sighting of a simple name.

Robot. Poor Robot. This time, it’s Robot on the bad end of bad news. This time, Randy’s the bastard who makes the call. He tries to keep his voice light as he holds the phone to his ear, light despite the hard knot in his chest and the hammering of his heart. Nothing wrong here, why would anything be wrong? Everything is  _ fine _ .

“Hey Robot, can you keep a secret?”

Robot says yes, because of course he does. And of course he  _ can _ , though that hadn’t ever been in question. No, this is just more of a sly, subtle (perhaps not-so-subtle, not to Robot) way of saying  _ Hey, I’m not strictly supposed to tell you this but I trust you more than anyone in the world and I need to tell  _ someone  _ or I’ll fucking burst, so here goes. _

It starts out pretty well, honestly. Randy, perky and upbeat as always, tells him all about how oops, maybe they’re not getting those AK-47s after all since their suppliers suddenly want Carter dead, and oh, he doesn’t forget to mention that they asked  _ Randy _ to be the one to put a bullet in his head, that’s the fun part, that’s the part that really makes him want to lose his mind because he’d had to say no to the biggest gang in the city. Haha. He tries to keep it light, really he does, but it’s like there’s a leak in his head and all his humor, all his energy, is just pouring out the back of his skull as he talks.

“How are you?” he finishes dully, because he wants to know, wants to hear any voice other than his own, wants to hear Robot’s specifically, and talk about anything else. Anything.

And it just doesn’t last, does it? It can’t, because Randy had to run his mouth and get Robot all worried about him. Sweet, sweet Robot—and  _ god _ Randy loves him to death but he can’t do this right now, baby, not right now. Not when his world is a raging ocean with waves as tall as skyscrapers and all he’s got to float on is a deflating raft and there are sharks, baby, there are sharks.

“We’re fucked,” Randy says, and that’s it, there goes the last of whatever was left of him, riding that exhale like a depressed surfer on the world’s smallest wave. It breaks something in him he’s been trying to hold up, a metaphorical anvil that’s been slowly grinding down the bones in his arms. He feels it hit the bottom of his stomach. Feels the reverberations shoot right up into his brain.

“Yeah,” Robot says apologetically, sounding like he hates to say it, but they would both hate it more if he lied.

Randy ought to say something but he can’t, so the silence stretches on. Can’t because if he does, if he opens his mouth again, something heinous and miserable and wretched might come out, the verbal equivalent of a drowned fucking rat.

“Uh,” Robot says. Doing his best. “This is probably a discussion we should have in person.”

Randy bites his tongue, digs his fingers into his palm. It feels like his heart trembles.

“Okay, uh, I’ll see you in a minute, Randy.”

Feels like his face is burning up, his eyes shriveling and itching in their sockets, his whole world falling apart because he’s going to die and his friends are going to die and it’s his fault.

“I’ll see you in a bit,” Robot says, his voice so softly encouraging and understanding and still on the line with him despite the endless stretch of silence because he knows. He must. He must know that elsewhere, phone held tightly to his ear, Randy is sitting back in his car with a hand clamped over his mouth, using his sandpaper throat to swallow every sound that threatens to come shrieking out of him. He must know. Randy can hear in his  _ voice _ that he knows, that he’ll stay on the line and listen to this strangled silence until someone rips the phone from his hand.

So Randy hangs up for him.

* * *

The call leaves an uncomfortable static prickling along Robot’s circuitry long after it’s over. Hearing the strain in Randy’s voice had been bad enough, but the silence? The silence had been so much worse. Robot knows there are empty silences that happen when someone who ought to be speaking simply gets distracted and their mind wanders elsewhere. There are no words to be had in those sorts of silences, nothing to be found. Randy’s silence had been the other kind, the sort where both parties are very much present and lucid. It was a full and heavy silence, thick with intent and words left unsaid and fears and emotions that can’t be described. That silence had been packed with as much meaning as the words that had left Randy’s mouth, but in a language that no one speaks. Robot can’t stand having that conversation milling about in his mind as the last talk they’d had. Outside the impound lot, up to his knees in the ratty shrubs that surround his car, Robot calls him again.

“Hey, Randy,” he says, as if everything might still be fine. “Sorry, I had some people at the store the last time you called me.” People as in the one mechanic who’d come to fix his car, who hadn’t gotten a lick of attention from him while he’d been on the phone. It’s not a very good excuse, honestly.

“Oh, I forgot I called you.”

Well, that’s certainly not true. Why would his voice sound so tight and exhausted if that were true? He’s trying to sound nonchalant and casual but it’s not right, not the same because his heart isn’t in it, and it only makes him sound distant. There’s no smile in his voice, and it hurts Robot to hear him sounding like he’d rather be doing something else. It’s some consolation that Randy asks him to come hang out with him and the remaining Hive, at least. It’s some consolation that that seems to instill an iota of liveliness back into his voice.

It’s a consolation that only lasts for a moment before they run out of things to talk about, any excuses to stay on the line with each other, and Randy hurries to hang up.

“Bye,” Randy says.

“See you later,” Robot says…

And he can’t help feeling that it’s not  _ right _ as he slips the phone back into his pocket. The feeling that something is  _ missing _ eats at him like rust as he climbs into his car, makes the coolant in him churn thickly. He doesn’t figure it out until he’s halfway to the city, the setting sun flashing hot and orange through the trees, the freeway bumpy and endless before him.

Randy hasn’t called him baby once today.

* * *

The meeting, if you can call it that, is a disaster. Not the car crash kind of disaster, but the stillness after the car crash where everyone’s crawling out of the wreckage and the engine catches fire a little. That kind of disaster. The kind you can crawl away from… maybe.

So Steve Reeker wants Randy dead too. Steve fucking Reeker, the man with the city in one pocket and all the big gangs in the other. The guy’s got huge pockets, okay, everyone knows it. Big fuckin’ fingers too, shoved into all the pies at the table, and hell, why  _ not _ hurl them all into Randy’s face like he’s some kind of clown, huh? Why not? Might as well! How much energy could it possibly expend to flatten one little insect underneath the giant’s shoe?

So yeah, Randy left in a bit of a manic frenzy, put his helmet on too fast and scratched his face, probably left Robot and the Hive in a cloud of industrial dust when he pulled away. It’s just that his mind is  _ reeling _ , his heart is  _ pounding _ , because suddenly, out of nowhere, the entire city hates him.  _ Him,  _ insignificant Randy Smith, the backwater moron who drives too fast, probably, and likes to hang out at a rural convenience store.

He can’t figure out what he did to deserve this, but the feeling that he deserves it anyway sticks with him like a virus he just can’t shake, making him jittery with fever. It’s got to be his fault somehow, got to be. Got to be because of his big mouth somehow. He tries so hard to pretend words never hurt him, you know, to be elevated above it all, to seem untouchable, because what does he have if he doesn’t have that? Not fucking much. So he tries to make a big show out of himself like he’s hoping people will catch on, only now it’s backfired somehow. T, Carter, and Robot, they stick around because they know he’s bullshitting, they’ve figured it out, but everyone else? Christ, they must think it’s real! Well, the talking is real, baby, the talking is always real, because it’s true, he talks hard and he talks fast and if he’s not talking, that’s probably a bad sign, but sometimes his mouth runs, baby, and sometimes the talking comes out a little bit like vomit. Heavy and uncontrollable, and yeah, he guesses it stinks too. So a lot like vomit, actually. Lately it’s been leaving the same bad taste in his mouth.

He can taste it now even though it’s been a while since he’s said anything, out here on his motorbike speeding past streetlamps, in and out of yellowing pools of light. Might be the taste of real vomit this time. Who knows. Maybe, if he stops to hurl chunks in a bush by the side of the road, someone will even creep up behind him and stab him in the back, just get it over and done with already because otherwise he’s going to be waiting for it  _ for the rest of his fucking life _ — 

He nearly shits himself when his phone starts vibrating like a thrashing fish in his pocket, starts screaming that stupid song at him. He pulls over, scoring violent tracks in the dirt, and whips out the phone, nearly launches it into the freeway, but then he sees who’s calling him.

Robot.

God, but his heart spasms like a real freak at the sight of that name. He brings the phone back, back into the safety of two hands, close to his face. The bright screen burns his eyes but he doesn’t pick up. God, he  _ can’t _ . If he opens his mouth right now he’s either going to start screaming or crying or fuck, maybe he really will throw up. Robot doesn’t need to hear that.

So he lets the phone ring, as much as he hates that stupid jingle, because he can’t answer, can’t bear to hang up on Robot. Charming, delightful Robot—the one light in the dark… at least until the phone takes him to voicemail, and the screen goes dark, and Randy on his bike becomes just another shadow on the side of the road.

Something is building up within him, filling him fuller than his body can handle—or it’s a black hole in his gut and it’s sucking in everything, turning him inside out and god, it’s not real, but  _ god _ , it hurts.

His phone lights up like a firework suddenly. A text—a text from Robot. Randy scrambles to open it, gloved fingers clumsy against glass screen, his arms as stiff as steel poles. He reads.

_ Hope you’re okay :( Be safe. _

A sound finally wrenches itself free from its cage of clenched teeth. It’s a miserable sort of mewling, a choked sob that he barely even hears over the roar of the freeway, but he feels it, and it feels like his throat is trying to strangle itself from the inside.

Randy is desperate to hear his voice. He didn’t even want to leave him back there, everything is so much worse being alone, but Randy  _ can’t _ . He can’t keep up the facade, not right now, maybe not anymore ever again. He can’t stand there and pretend to be cool about the world crashing down on his head, he can’t laugh while he has to check around each corner for a thug with a knife and a bad craving for his intestines, can’t be  _ Randy _ while Randy is trying to ward off a nuclear meltdown with his bare hands. God, fuck, he just can’t.

So with fingers that feel numb, he taps at the keyboard on his phone.

_ love u xoxoxoxoxo _

It feels inadequate, most definitely is, but it’s all he’s got left. He can’t offer Robot anything else, can’t assure him that things will be okay, can’t sell him some genius officially licensed Randy plan. All he can do is love him.

The reply, he gets immediately.

_ Love you too xxx _

It takes him a while to get off the side of the road because, y’know, he can’t exactly see with tears in his eyes.

* * *

“We gotta talk,” Randy says, roughly 24 hours later.

Robot usually keeps the store open for the night since he doesn’t have to sleep but tonight, under Randy’s uneasy gaze, he frowns and shuts off the lights.

“Sounds serious,” Robot says, frowning. His eyes are inquisitive and sad behind his glasses, like he already knows. It’s hard to look at them.

Randy laughs faintly. “Oh, it is. Deadly serious, actually, as in I could die at any moment. I could die right now.”

“Please don’t.”

“Yeah, that’s not really up to me.” His hands feel cold. He shoves them into his pockets. “Hey, can we go somewhere more private? Like up on the roof?”

He doesn’t know why he suggests the roof, there’s nothing private about it. If anything, it’s more like he’s offering himself up on a pedestal for someone to snipe down. So it’s stupid… but that’s where it feels like this should happen, up on the roof. It just feels right. He has a few good memories up there, he thinks as he climbs the shed behind the store. Maybe that’s why.

Yeah, maybe he’s thinking of that other time Robot closed his store for the night, when they climbed up here just to be alone and quiet, together. They’d kicked back up here, lain down so they could see the stars. It had been such a clear night, the perfect opportunity for stargazing, but Randy hadn’t been able to take his eyes off Robot. Robot with a pleased smile playing at his metallic lips, his eyes soft and skyward, the stars reflected in his glasses. It’s hard, and near impossible even now, not to fall in love with him all over again every time Randy remembers that night, the night they’d held hands as if it was perfectly normal, as if that’s just what friends  _ do _ , but it’s not. It’s not, it’s not, it’s not—or maybe it is, sometimes, but not that time, right? Not under the cover of pearlescent moonlight, privately anxious in spite of the immense comfort they drew from each other? Not when Randy had felt so self conscious, too aware of every breath and every twitch and the odd placement of his arm—at least until their hands had linked, finally, and suddenly everything  _ fit _ , with the earth-shaking gravity of a tectonic plate sliding into place. They hadn’t said anything but they’d both felt it, hadn’t they? The alignment of planets, the synchronized bursting of fireworks, the shiver that had torn up Randy’s arm? The bone-deep  _ rightness _ of that moment, as if everything that had ever happened to them, down to the worst and most painful times—well it was all okay, because this was it had all led to?

But now, Robot is afraid to look at him. Robot is terrified to turn around and see such a sorrowful, defeated look in Randy’s eyes.  _ His _ Randy, who Robot can do nothing to help. That’s why Robot doesn’t look at him until he can’t avoid it any longer, because he knows things are about to get worse. He knows there’s nothing he can do to stop it.

On top of the roof they pause, and Randy looks up at the sky.

“It’s cloudy,” he says. Robot’s not sure how that’s relevant.

“Do you want to sit down, or—?”

“No, no, I’m good. Feels better to stand up right now, if I’m honest. I’ve been kind of restless.”

Robot nods. “I get that.”

Then Randy looks at him, and there’s that look, the one he didn’t want to see, the one that feels like a punch to the gut every time. “Robot, I… I think I gotta go away for a while.”

It seems to get a lot colder out here suddenly, somehow, despite it being a warm and breezeless night in the middle of summer.

“Oh,” Robot says, barely.

“I don’t know for how long, but a while. As long as it takes for all these gangs and lawyers and whatever to get bored of looking for me.” Randy almost laughs. “You know how I am, I’m a hot topic, everybody wants a piece of this.”

“Oh.”

“I, uh, haven’t told anyone else yet, so far it’s just you. I don’t need anyone trying to talk me out of it, y’know, I already thought about it and made up my mind ‘cause otherwise, if I stick around here, I’m either gonna die or go crazy, whichever comes first.”

“Oh.”

“Robot?”

Robot blinks. Randy is frowning at him, his face a pale beacon in the dark. Robot tries to pull himself back together.

“When are you leaving?” he asks, then immediately wishes he hadn’t because he doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to make it any more real than it has to be.

“Tonight.”

Ah, he must let something truly grave-looking slip across his face because Randy starts forward suddenly, a hand outstretched as if he means to take Robot by the arm, but he doesn’t finish closing the gap. He just stands there, frozen mid-step… afraid to touch him, suddenly.

“I know it’s short notice,” Randy says, looking and sounding as miserable as Robot feels, “I’m sorry. I just can’t— _ can’t _ hang around here anymore, Robot, or I’m gonna lose it. Whatever I do, even if I do nothing, everybody wants me dead for something, it’s like they just hate me for existing.”

“I don’t hate you,” Robot murmurs. For an instant, nothing longer, Randy’s face softens.

“I know. You’re the only reason I stuck around this long, honestly.”

That hurts in an entirely new way, somehow, because now Robot’s wondering if he’s been the anchor tying Randy to this whole mess—if, somehow, Robot could have saved him after all. 

“What about the Hive?” Robot says instead, just to fill the silence. “They love you too, you know.”

“I know, I know that, and I love them, but it’s… it’s not the same. They’re the Hive and you’re… you’re Robot. It’s not the same.”

This time when Randy’s face changes, it sticks. Gone are those sorrowful, tortured eyes, replaced now by a trepidation that seems to occupy his entire body, from his pacing feet to the hand fidgeting with his zipper to the teeth gnawing on his lip. He’s practically electric with it, Robot can feel it radiating off him in waves, and just looking at him makes Robot start to feel it himself, as if he can feel the real news approaching like a dark storm, news that will change everything, forever.

It does, in a way. Once Randy manages to spit it out.

“Robot, I love you.”

“I love you too,” Robot says slowly, in confusion. This is hardly news, after all—though the odd strangled way Randy said it was new.

“No, Robot, I  _ love _ you. I  _ love _ love you.”

“Randy, I know—”

“No, it’s… not like that, I—fuck.” Randy runs a frantic hand across his scalp, looking a bit crazed. “It’s like—you know how those dumb romance movies go, like the really bad ones, I mean embarrassingly bad, where it’s completely over the top ridiculous how crazy these two people get over each other, like stupid crazy, and you’re sitting there thinking, ‘Wow this is so stupid, real people would never act like this,’ right? Except maybe the bad romance movies have a point, because that’s exactly how I feel, all the time, constantly.” Randy comes practically skipping across the roof at him like a mad person, his face lit up with importance and urgency, and if it were anyone else, Robot would have run for the hills.

“Now I’m not saying this is a bad movie,” Randy says, “but think about The Princess Bride, right—the part where Westley fights that giant rat and Buttercup just hangs out and watches and he’s cool with that, right, well why is he so cool with it? It’s because he loves her, and I’d fight a giant rat for you, baby, and it’d be cool if you just watched.”

Robot stares at him. “I… don’t know if we have rats that big in the city.”

“Of course we do, baby, of course we do. This is Los Santos.”

“And… why that part of the movie in particular?”

“Because that rat always scared the shit out of me when I was a kid but I’d kick its ass for you anyway, baby.”

Robot wonders if Randy realizes just how often the word  _ baby _ is coming out of his mouth right now, like a nervous tic. Robot almost tells him—doesn’t, because he finds himself suddenly preoccupied when Randy whips out a cigarette and his crazed, trembling hands have such a hard time lighting it that Robot has to do it for him. In the silence that follows, as Randy comes down from whatever horrible high it was that had taken him, Robot watches him. Watches the long, handsome bridge of his nose, his knobbly fingers, the odd flexing of his throat.

And Robot wonders… is it so significant to feel this way, like his coolant is warm when it should be cold, like his cooling fans forget to breathe sometimes, like every moment spent without Randy is just a moment in the interim? It can’t be, can it? Because he loves his other friends too, loves them to death, but… no, he supposes his heart doesn’t swell and overflow whenever they text him, no matter what the words may be. He doesn’t light up like a goddamn light bulb when they glance at him knowingly, reveling in some shared secret. He doesn’t catch himself daydreaming about sitting flush against them on a grassy hill, or perhaps on the beach, doing nothing but existing beside each other, hands interlocked, shoulders pressed together. He would miss them if they went away, of course he would, but he wouldn’t feel like he’s dying, not like he feels now.

No, Robot realizes. Randy is right; it’s not the same.

“You’re  _ in _ love with me,” Robot ventures,  _ finally _ understanding, and it all clicks into place.

Randy, with tinged cheeks and an air of exhausted victory about him, stops chewing on his cigarette. “Yeah,” he says faintly, nearly grinning. “I’m in love with you, Robot. Short notice again, I know, but… I didn’t want to leave without saying that.”

Robot doesn’t want him to start chewing on that damn cigarette again so he puts a hand against Randy’s, stopping it before it can return to his mouth. Robot tries to smile, expecting it to be quite hard, and finds it to be quite easy, despite it all. Actually, right now, smiling is the easiest thing in the world. Calling it smiling is underwhelming, even. Robot  _ beams _ .

“I’d fight the giant rat for you too, Randy,” he says, and can’t not laugh, because this feels so right, and he feels so light with relief and some otherworldly peace that he wouldn’t be surprised if the slightest breeze just blew the two of them away. Relief blooms on Randy’s face, breaking through that tired expression like the sun blasting through dark clouds until he looks like himself again, until he looks like Randy. Robot’s Randy, wild and magnetic and  _ alive _ , baby.

“Sounds like we’re gonna have to go find ourselves a giant rat at some point,” he says.

“We can make a date out of it.”

“Please, god, tell me I can kiss you now,” Randy breathes.

“You can. You should.”

Randy kisses him without hesitation—not violently or wildly, but slowly and with great intent, as if he’s been waiting his whole life for this. As if everything either of them has ever done has been for this. Robot, with no idea what he’s doing but living for it anyway, lets Randy put a hand on his back, another hand on the side of his face, and Robot catches himself wishing the odd wish that Randy had a few more hands. Objectively, Robot doesn’t know if it’s a good kiss or not. He’s never kissed anyone before. All he knows is that the coolant in him is racing and he feels alive with static, alive alive alive because Randy’s mouth is on his, warm and pliant and human and  _ Randy _ .

Finally.

Randy pulls away to breathe but he doesn’t go far. He keeps a hand on the back of Robot’s neck, keeps their faces so close that Robot can still feel the warmth coming off him, can see the captured galaxies in his irises.

And Randy is grinning like an idiot. “Fuck, I love you. I love you so fucking much.”

“I love you too, Randy,” Robot says, and he’s never meant it more than he does in this moment, with his heart all but bursting with it.

Some naive part of him hopes that this has changed something, that Randy can’t leave, not now that they’ve fixed the course of the earth together. They’ve fixed what was wrong, haven’t they? Things are how they should be now, aren’t they?

They stay like that as long as they can, until eventually, Randy pulls away and Robot remembers that the night is cold. They look at each other, maybe for the last time, and Robot is so sure that they’re both thinking the same thing.  _ Why did we wait so long when deep down, we both knew? How did we mess it up this badly? _

But they don’t say it, not out loud. Instead, Robot walks him down to his car, lingers in its headlights like some dumb animal caught in them, helpless and resigned.

“Be safe,” he says, and Randy smiles at him one more time.

“I’m trying, baby.”

* * *

They all try, but there’s only so much a small gang can do in the face of a rampaging city. The days seem to roll by in slow motion until they become weeks, until weeks become months, until months become stretches of time that seem both new and old, endless and unchanging. It’s bizarre and unfair how it feels like he’s never been without this bone-deep aching, how it feels like he’s spent his whole life in this heavy, droughtish purgatory, while Randy’s absence always stings like a fresh wound. Time warps everything… everything but that.

And time beats down upon the Hive with merciless fists. T keeps hidden, goes as far as to dye his hair and change his beard and completely reimagine his wardrobe, but it’s not only the clothes that change him. It’s the fear. The rare times he does roll around, Robot hardly recognizes him. Carter tries to keep his nose out of other people’s business and gets a bullet through the back of his head for it. He’s still alive, but he’s different now. The Hive is different now. Robot had Dian and Ricky… but never in the same room as each other, never together. Then Ricky got the same idea as Randy, and left. He’s gone, so now Robot only has Dian, but she’s always busy with work…

So most of the time, Robot is alone, in his store, behind the counter, because at least he still has some semblance of control over this one thing. He still has this last shred of normalcy. And he gets company at the store, of course he does—familiar faces, usually friendly, that don’t mind hanging out for a bit to chat with him about inane things like the weather, or what’s in stock, or what’s up with his car, what’s up with Grapeseed, with the city, and wow, these gangs are still going at it, huh?

Robot doesn’t  _ care _ . He can’t be mad at these acquaintances of his for being kind, for being friendly, but something dark and insidious and wholly unlike himself stirs every time they show up. It stirs because every time the doors to his store swing wide and that bell goes off he looks up with a desparate, pathetic hope that it’s Randy he’ll see, his arms thrown wide and his teeth bared in a big dumb grin. It never is. It never is, and Robot has to force a smile, welcome these strangers into a hole in his life that doesn’t belong to them, and pretend they haven’t just broken his heart all over again simply by walking through the door.

It’s not their fault.

It’s not their fault that Randy doesn’t reply to the myriad of texts Robot has been sending him, message after message, like updates in a journal. He doesn’t expect any replies, he’s fairly certain Randy got rid of his phone or at least turned it off, or maybe the battery died, but Robot doesn’t do it for the replies anyway. It’s just… to talk. To dissect his head and get the words  _ out _ , to relocate them somewhere else, because it’s like they’re poisonous and he can’t have them circulating through his body anymore. It’s just venting… even if he does hope, stupidly, that one of these days Randy might even read them, might even send him something in return. Anything. Please, anything.

Robot wonders how he’d ever managed to live like this before, on his own and lonely in a sea of people. Sure, he’d once had Fingle, and then he’d also had Dan and Ken and Jerry, but that’s hardly the same as having the Hive, as having Randy. They told him they loved him sometimes but always with a sly edge to their voices, as if telling a joke he wasn’t in on. They never delighted in the simple truth of his company or held his hands and looked straight past his flaws and told him he was perfect. With them, he felt as alone as he does now… only now, he knows what’s missing. Now he knows.

He knows that despite how busy his store gets, he’s alone. Without the sound of rowdy laughter, of long-winded, prattling stories that may or may not be true, he is alone. No weird music blasting from the car in the dead of night, upsetting all the neighbors; no cozily whispered I love yous behind the counter, stolen in moments of quiet solitude. There is a void here, but Robot doesn’t think it’s the store. It can’t be the store because it follows him like his shadow, perpetual and inescapable and just part of the way the world works now. It’s become a fact of life, and Robot can’t shake it. Eventually, he stops trying.

To customers, he smiles.

* * *

Whoever warned Randy that coming back would be harder than leaving was a fucking moron. It was that random lady at the gas station, he thinks, the one he’d run into what feels like ages ago on his way out of the city. He hadn’t meant to give her so much information but, you know, his mouth runs, and she asked him why he was leaving and he might’ve said something about how he had some shit he needed to get away from. “If you just run away, all your problems’ll still be here when you get back,” she’d said. He doesn’t know why he still remembers that, but he’s glad he does. He plans to rub it in her face if he ever sees her again.

His car rips across the asphalt like a fucking rocket, maxed out, top speed. Oh, he still knows these roads like the back of his hand, knows every bump and pothole. He knows where all the good jumps are but he doesn’t take them, not now—no joyriding across mountains, flying off precipices, or skidding off road, not right now. No, Randy keeps to the road and drives like he has a murderer on his ass, which is ironic now that he finally doesn’t.

The Vipers, gone; the Lettermen, sated; the city, always moving onto bigger and better things, baby. He’s a free man and things are as they should be. No one gives a flying fuck about his dumb ass anymore.

Is it criminal that he hasn’t checked his phone yet? Probably. It feels like a time bomb there in the passenger seat, like a presence big and mean enough to actually warrant sitting there. He turns that bad boy on and he’ll never hear the end of it, he’ll be taken through time text after text, voicemail after voicemail, when right now all he wants is to be in the moment,  _ this  _ moment, because now he’s taking the familiar corner around the farm and it feels like there’s grooves in the road where his tires always used to go, like he’s a train on its tracks and they’re taking him exactly where he needs to be.

Robot Retail is lit up like a lighthouse in the dark. Its windows practically glow, light spilling through the glass and onto the asphalt, onto the chrome motorcycle parked outside that nearly gives Randy a heart attack because it’s here.  _ He’s _ here.

Ah, Randy makes a grand effort not to simply come crashing through the windows like a crazy person. Robot probably wouldn’t love that. He parks his car right next to the bike like a perfectly normal person, thank you, and tries to still his hammering heart like a normal person, thanks, as he pushes through the doors. The light is almost blinding after being in a dark car for so long but he fights the burn in his eyes, doesn’t dare to close them even for a second, because there he is. Robot, behind the counter, in person, not just a dream, not anymore.

Robot doesn’t look up even when the door bell jingles. Randy is a little glad because otherwise, Robot would see him standing there like an idiot, forgetting to breathe or breathing too much, Randy doesn’t know. Oh, just seeing him there, it’s the same feeling he gets after a stunt—no, fuck that,  _ during _ a stunt—the feeling of being alive and wild and victorious, untouchable, all the world’s options open to him. It’s a shot of adrenaline to the heart. It is, quite literally, a thrill.

Robot still hasn’t looked up. He’s staring at his phone with a weird distant sort of intensity, typing up a novel. Christ. Randy kind of envies the bastard who’s going to get that in his inbox.

“Welcome to Robot Retail,” Robot says, still distant, still distracted. He sounds tired. God, Randy is dying to just run up there and make such a fool of himself that Robot has no choice but to laugh but he can’t let himself do that, because he’s stupid, and because he thought of a really great bit on the way here and would be sad for the rest of his life if he didn’t follow through.

So Randy takes his time sauntering up to the counter, pauses to investigate the bags of chips, the little plastic cups of to-go cereal. He stops by the magazines and leafs through the one with a particularly good-looking car on the front. He picks up a pack of gum, scrutinizes it, places it back. Strolls up to the counter all cool like, you know. Casual, comfortable. Not betraying the heart trying to pound its way up his throat. Oh, fuck, this is stupid, but also so good.

In a voice that is much too calm for the way he’s feeling, he says, “Is  _ everything _ behind the counter for sale?”

Robot looks up so abruptly that his glasses skew. His face becomes the portrait of picture perfect shock and Randy wants to kiss him so fucking badly but his stupid mouth keeps running.

“‘Cause baby, I’d really like a piece of y—”

Honestly, thank god he doesn’t get to finish, because Robot throws himself at him, the counter an inconsequential obstacle—flings his arms around him, buries his face in the crook of his neck, utters his name so quietly, so desperately, that Randy feels some old, pent up thing burst in his chest. Randy laughs faintly, wipes the wetness in his eyes on Robot’s shoulder, knowing he won’t mind. He shuts up, just this once, and simply holds Robot back.

Ah, so this is how it feels to be okay. To be  _ right _ .

Robot pulls back suddenly, too soon for Randy’s liking, and captures Randy’s face in his hands. It’s a little weird but alright, Randy will let him. He’ll let him stare with those robotic eyes, glimmering with a wiser sort of intensity than Randy was expecting. God, just looking at him now, realizing how long it’s truly been since they’ve seen each other, Randy’s hold on reality slips, just a little. Their last meeting couldn’t have been real, it must have been a desperate dream he’d had along the timeline somewhere during some lonely and destitute night, a desire deepest that had slipped free of his subconscious mind while he wasn’t awake enough to keep it trapped.

But Robot kisses him. Hands on his face, he kisses him, and Randy knows that night was real, and this is real, and they’re kissing over the counter of Robot Retail, an over-the-counter kiss, prescription free, baby.

And then Robot is looking at him again, seeing him in ways that no one has ever bothered to before. “Welcome home,” he says, and his smile is the sweetest thing Randy has ever seen.

“Good to be home, baby,” Randy says, and kisses him again because he just can’t help himself.

When they part, Randy vaults over the counter and comes to stand a little too close to Robot, but what can he say? Robot stands a little too close right back, their shoulders pressed against each other, their thighs touching, so Randy helps himself and slings an arm around Robot’s waist, right where it should be. Where it was always meant to go.

“Hey, did you get my texts?” Robot asks, and Randy blinks.

“You’ve been texting me?”

“Yeah, quite a lot, actually. I was in the middle of writing one just now.”

Randy grins like an idiot. “Oh yeah? Well I’m here now, so lucky you, you get to tell me everything in person.”

“I mean, I’ve been texting you practically every day, you’re really gonna make me read them all out loud?”

“I just want to hear your voice, honestly.”

Robot sighs, but he’s still smiling. He unlocks his phone. “You’re going to be sick of it by the time I finish.”

“Never, baby.”

Never, just like how he’ll never tire of the youthful butterflies that spring up in his stomach whenever Robot looks at him, like how he’ll never leave again as long as he’s alive to help it. Maybe one day he’ll leave the city but not without Robot, because beside him is the place he intends to set up shop, pitch a tent, erect a house, however you’d like to put it. He could go anywhere and be okay as long as he’s by Robot’s side, because that’s home. It’s not the city, it’s not a gang, it’s not even the store.

It’s Robot, and he’s back now.

Finally.


End file.
